Free The Sparrow (The Returned) by Jason Mott Page A

again. She was smart enough to know that there was tension between the two of them. They were behaving the way her parents behaved when they were fighting and did not want Tatiana to know.
    “And where do you go to school?” Matt asked.
    “What’s your mother’s name?” Heather asked, speaking loudly, as if to drown out her husband. “We want to help you find your family, but we’ve got to at least know who we’re looking for.” She smiled as she asked the questions, trying to make the young girl feel at home. “We’ve got to know a little about the people who love you.”
    * * *
    “It will be all right,” Tatiana’s mother said. But she said it too often for the child to believe it.
    It was 1994, and Tatiana was not allowed outside. Now and again she could hear gunshots ringing in the distance, the sound of large trucks moving back and forth, the sound of fighting. Many of the neighbors had already fled to family members in places more stable than this. But Tatiana’s mother refused to leave. She lived in front of the television now, searching for her husband.
    At breakfast Tatiana’s mother flitted about the kitchen nervously, moving back and forth from the stove to the window, as if expecting something or someone. Tatiana sat at the kitchen table and swung her small legs back and forth and watched her mother. There were three places set, even though Tatiana’s father had not been seen for several days now.
    “Did you finish your math problems last night?” her mother asked.
    “Yes,” Tatiana replied.
    “Good. Even if the school is closed, that is no excuse not to learn. Never forget that.”
    The school had been closed for almost a week now as the country fell deeper into chaos. But Tatiana’s mother was resolved that her daughter should not suffer. These times would pass, she believed. And once they did, normalcy would return. It was the only way the world could be, wasn’t it?
    Throughout breakfast the empty place where Tatiana’s father should have been was like a whirlpool, quietly consuming any semblance of solace or comfort from the house. Tatiana’s mother had bags under her eyes each morning, and she drifted through conversations as though her body were speaking all on its own. Most mornings, like this one, she hardly spoke at all.
    The tension was making Tatiana’s head hurt. “When is Father coming home?” she asked.
    “Soon,” her mother said without hesitation, as if she had long ago submitted to the inevitability of the question. “He is working extra hours, Tati. That’s all.”
    Tatiana chewed her food slowly, debating how much she felt she could press the issue. Outside a truck passed by, bringing with it the acrid smell of burning diesel, an odor that lately seemed to penetrate every corner of Tatiana’s small village.
    Neither of them spoke, and, long after the truck was gone, Tatiana could not help but linger in the silence it left behind, hoping it would be broken by the sound of her father’s key turning in the front door.
    “When do you think he will be home?” Tatiana said finally—when the silence had not delivered her father. “I wanted to work on our story.”
    “I could help you with it,” her mother replied.
    “But it was one of Father’s stories,” Tatiana lamented. Her mother nodded but would not look her daughter in the eyes.
    For all of Tatiana’s life, her parents had been creating stories with her. Fables and tales of adventure and magic. It began even before she was born, when her father would press his hand to his wife’s rounded belly and whisper. The stories always began the same: “Once...when the world was very young...” Tatiana’s mother would tease him, asking why he didn’t begin with “Once upon a time,” the way everyone else did. His reply was simply, “Because every fairy tale begins that way. I want her to remember me differently. I want our stories to be special.”
    Tatiana and her parents took turns with the narrative,